Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[h_k_s]

I'm asking if you have heard of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz the philosopher from the early 1700's ??

It's a simple question. Not a loaded question.

I've never heard of Leibniz.

That explains it !!

Leibniz addressed your question fully.

He is one of the classic "Romantic philosophers" -- which means they deal with the existence of God.

So if you are sincere then you can start reading about him.

And if your question is simply rhetorical then you can just go ahead and join the skeptics.

[Belindi]

Mysterio448:

No. Just as if I had an abusive or absentee father, he would not deserve my respect merely because he begat me.

I think one thing that needs to be determined is what the term "worship" actually means. Does worship come from a sense of awe and wonder or from a sense of admiration and adoration. If it is the former, than God's building the world on a foundation of blood and pain is not a problem; but if it is the latter, then I can only be mystified as to why anyone would want to worship God.

Well, you are free to make and worship any image of God you create.

'Worship' is a shortened form of 'worthship'. What might be deemed worthy and have been worthshipped has included a powerful supernatural being or beings: humans such as Jesus, Mary his mother, and bodhisattvas: cult leaders: forces of nature which have been personalised as in the Roman pantheon: Platonic values: codes of law: nations: international myths such as money or market forces: science.

[h_k_s]

It is unclear whether the primary topic of Original Post is meant to (1) make and support a conclusion or (2) ask a philosophical question.

It appears the Original Post could be claiming and providing argument to support the following conclusion: the very engine by which the world operates is an innate cycle of violence and bloodshed. To me, that conclusion seems somewhat agreeable except for its vagueness. Decent evidence and argument to support the vague conclusion was provided in the Original Post.

However, it appears alternatively the Original Post might be meant to ask a question about a very different subject which is someone along the following lines: "Why did God create the world [to operate by an engine of innate violence and bloodshed]?" If so, I feel that question represents a loaded question fallacy.

The evidence, elaboration, and argument in the post almost all seems to support the conclusion rather than the loaded question and the assumptions with which the loaded question is loaded. As is often the case, I believe it's the unspoken assumptions that are most doubtful and debatable than the spoken ones, the question itself, or any potential answers to the question.

The question appears to possibly assume all of the following without specifying them as premised of the question:

(a) At least one god exists.
(b) That god is the only god that exists (i.e. there is one and only one god).
(c) For some reason, what is in the Christian religious texts matters as to us understanding the nature of that god, but for some reason all the other religions' texts aren't as important to understanding the nature of the god.
(d) The world was created by that god.
(e) That god is responsible for the world that was created, meaning the god presumably had full control over how the world was created versus being subject to some kind of universal laws or such that even partly governed how the world was created.
(f) The god has free-will.
(g) The god has reasons for what it does.
(h) That god has desires and preferences.
(i) For some unknown reason, that god would have reason to not want to create a world with violence or has reason to prefer a world with less violence (meaning that the god's choice to create a world with violence requires explanation).

Even if they had been stated instead of loaded, if any of the above loaded assumptions are invalid or untrue, the question loses meaning.

The above list is not meant to be exhaustive or exact, especially since the reader (me in this case) is forced to guess at the exact nature of the unspoken premises since they are loaded in instead of explicitly stated. Those are just guesses at what the unspoken loaded premises of the question are; I could be wrong about that list.

Due to the loaded question fallacy, I would conclude that overall the question lacks meaning and thus any and all answers are wrong. (But as always I could be wrong.)

I agree that the O/P's question sounds loaded.

Atheists often load their questions in order to cut to the chase with their fallacy of affirmation of the consequent.

I think it is more important to separate religion from philosophy, as Bertrand Russell admonishes us to do.

Russell was also an atheist but I don't hold that against him. He kept religion out of his philosophical thought experiments and tried to stay focused on pure philosophy.

Other atheists should take the high road and also do the same.

[Eduk]

Atheists often load their questions in order to cut to the chase with their fallacy of affirmation of the consequent.

It's not just atheists who do that.

Never has a book been subjected to such pitiless search for error as the Holy Bible. Both reverent and agnostic critics have ploughed and harrowed its passages; but through it all God's word has stood supreme…. This is proof…that here we have a revelation from God; for…if God reveals himself to man…, he will preserve a record of that revelation in order that men who follow may know his way and will.

Everyone also makes the fallacy fallacy. Fallacies aren't the end of the world but statements like 'atheists are X' or 'theists are X' or 'liberals are X' seem to be universally massively and ridiculously incorrect, even though on the face of it it seems to be possible, I'll try 'atheists breath oxygen'.

[Eduk]

In fairness I'm assuming all atheists are human. I assume there is at least a chance of alien life and likelihood is that at least some of them must be atheists. Hmm I'll give it another go, 'atheists are atheists'. Starting to get a bit generic though.

[Gertie]

When you really look at it, the world is just full of living beings that are constantly making meals of other living beings. Carnivores eat herbivores, and herbivores eat living plants. Big fish eats small fish which eats smaller fish. Viruses reproduce by exploiting the cellular mechanisms of a host and then they slowly destroy that host. Humans in the developed world eat things like beef, chicken, pork, and fish that, by the time we eat it, is so butchered and processed beyond recognition that one often forgets the meat used to be a part of a living, sentient being. Violence, agony, dismemberment, destruction -- these things are not just qualities that exist in the world but are a fundamental law of the world. Here https://youtu.be/fmwC9HzcWbQ is a video of a deer being eaten alive and disemboweled by two komodo dragons. A scene like this is a great visual reference of the concept I'm discussing. An innocent animal is being unceremoniously butchered and consumed in front of its own eyes by uncaring predators. This is not "evil"; this is part of God's design.

What I'm getting at is not about the problem of evil or the problem of suffering as those issues are normally discussed. I'm saying that this innate cycle of violence and bloodshed is the very engine by which the world operates. It is not an unsightly blight upon the world, it is the world.

Some Christians might propose that this state of the world is the result of the fall of Adam. But I don't see how this is the case. When Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit, God did not pronounce a general curse upon the whole world but rather a specific set of curses as punishment.

Genesis 3:16-19 - To the woman he said, "I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you." And to Adam he said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, 'You shall not eat of it,' cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

As you can see, the concept I'm describing here is not stipulated in the above passage.

The world's "engine of violence" cannot be explained away as a mere curse, as one would find it hard to conceive how the world could exist without this engine. Unchecked reproduction cannot be maintained. The phrase "Be fruitful and multiply" must be accompanied by the phrase "be merciless and kill".

So, I suppose my question is this: Why did God create the world this way? I'm not asking why did God create violence or why does God allow violence. The question is more fundamental than that. Why did God choose to make this "engine of violence" the very substance of the world that he created?

Good question, well put.

[Sy Borg]

It would seem that the process of transforming insensate rocks into intelligent and aware beings is a rather long and tortuous path, at least at our time scales.

[Jklint]

Why did God create the world this way?

If one wants to inflect god into the argument, since when would a sadist require a reason to be sadistic?

[Darshan]

Earthellism answers why did God create this world this way. The answer is in the book "The Life and Death of Planet Earth". This world is a true astronomical and biological miracles of all miracles. It is very likely that we may be the most intelligent life in the universe and our God exists in our solar system and protects our planet from destruction. It is clear the asteroid that ended the dinosaurs was relatively small and did not wipe out life but nudged it towards mammals and humans. Clearly another asteroid that size would have hit us many times in the last 64 million years and if it did, we would not have evolved to modern humans. Our God protected our planet to let us evolve into who we are know. God also wanted this most beautiful of all planets to sustain life as long as possible so he chose for death to bring life and for life to bring death in that God wanted creatures to devour each other to sustain life as long as possible. The circle of life was the only way to sustain the longest period of living on this planet. God is not here on the surface of earthell, but has cried an ocean of tears for the suffering that happens here to continue the circle of life. God cannot be here and Heaven at the same time, for if God was here than earthell would be Heaven which it is not. God resides in Heaven and welcomes us back to Heaven from earthell and gives us infinite Love.

[NickGaspar]

Why did God create the world this way?
-According to the "argument" of fine tuning.....he didn't really have a choice.

[Sculptor1]

When you really look at it, the world is just full of living beings that are constantly making meals of other living beings. Carnivores eat herbivores, and herbivores eat living plants. Big fish eats small fish which eats smaller fish. Viruses reproduce by exploiting the cellular mechanisms of a host and then they slowly destroy that host. Humans in the developed world eat things like beef, chicken, pork, and fish that, by the time we eat it, is so butchered and processed beyond recognition that one often forgets the meat used to be a part of a living, sentient being. Violence, agony, dismemberment, destruction --

This is God.

[Repoman05]

Oops, OP made a codification fallacy right near the beginning. There's not really such a thing as a herbivore. Turns out "herbivores" don't really care about your system of classification. They'll all eat meat except things like koala bears that are specialized to only eat one thing. Even then, I'd bet there's a koala bear that isn't too stupid not to eat carrion before starving to death. You can do the research yourself on Google, super easy. Try "deer eating road kill" "deer eating gut piles" "deer eating mouse." my fave was a "herbivore" tortoise munching on a duck. Big bags of my zoolology heroes all died hard one day. Shortly after that I decided the word "race" is just a reified equivocation fallacy to turn family into a competition and justify nepotism so as to slippery slope for aristocracy. There's no starting gun and no finish line. There never was a race. It's just another scheme to gain control of everyone else's labor.

Dictionaries are books of lies.

[Repoman05]

What if a bucket of a well created the universe?

[Repoman05]

Would you still call it God?

[Steve3007]

Why did God choose to make this "engine of violence" the very substance of the world that he created?

As a general rule, He didn't. It's mostly empty space.